This kind of article does not belong to Nature. It talks about what the media said as evidence , undefined alternative facts, how "Rejecting mainstream science has become a theme for Trump", yet the only fact presented is that tillerson acknowledged climate change. Other than the fair criticism of pushing fossil fuels, it's a purely political fluff article. Even editorials should be based on facts in Nature.
Not true: freezing EPA funds, censoring EPA twitter, replacing web pages on climate change with fossile fuel propaganda, and disputing truth on live television
We need to act, and we need to act now. Science is what got this man elected (twitter, television), now it needs to fight for the very basic principles.
> Science is what got this man elected (twitter, television), now it needs to fight for the very basic principles.
The word "science" seems to mean almost everything nowadays.
Twitter and television are not science. They are social constructs built around the works of engineering, which itself was based on some established scientific knowledge.
>Twitter and television are not science. They are social constructs built around the works of engineering, which itself was based on some established scientific knowledge.
I admit it's a long causality chain, but without the scientific methods, those things would not exist. Thus, those methods are what we need to preserve in order to advance, and this is very openly threatened by the current administration.
I agree that scientific method needs to be preserved, but honestly, I don't think the current US administration even enters top 10 of dangers to science itself. Science as both the methods and the established culture around it has been in serious trouble for years now, and a lot of that has to do with mass media reporting and with the way incentives for scientists are structured.
As for Trump's administration creating creating a danger for the climate-change mitigation efforts, that's another topic.
He targeted his ads using social media in a very scientific matter (the article on the front page yesterday??). Ads selected on beliefs associated with responses to social media behavior.
But you're right that using Twitter by itself is not science.
Do you really rely on only one source for your information? Maybe the article is not top notch investigative journalism, that doesn't dispute that this administration is openly aggressive to science that doesn't fit their agenda.
Thanks for saying that. I wonder why nature feels that scientists around the world need to read pure fluff which presents speculation as fact. Maybe because they want to bias scientists for or against someone? Science still needs to be blind.
Science must be political when it comes to self-preservation. It must not bias or censor research due to politics, which is where we're currently headed.
I don't think so. So scientists should fight to keep their jobs even if their science is bad? Some of the best science came from the most unlikely places, and was not funded.
So, you're saying 'some science is bad' and 'some science doesn't need public funding'... and that's your justification for a blanket ban on research grants?
You say there are "too many to list" but if you want this argument to sound even vaguely informed you're going to have to be a lot more specific about which science is bad and why.
From your comments it's not clear whether you know anything about science or public policy or have just read an article that says "science is bad, mmkay"
> freezing EPA funds, censoring EPA twitter, replacing web pages on climate change with fossile fuel propaganda
That's not science, that's politics. You might very reasonably disagree with it, but there's no branch of scientific inquiry that says that the EPA should be funded to a specific amount or be communicating in a certain way.
Obama expanded the EPA to care about climate change, Trump is reining it back in. C'est la political vie, and it should be dealt with like any other politics one might disagree with, but it's nothing to do with science.
That his energy plan does not mention the threat of climate change is another fact, that the energy plan does not mention nuclear power, that of two scientists he has met after the election one is well known for his active denial of the central discovery of climate science: these are more facts the article relays.
